The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad track substantially
follows the Trail through the mountains, which here afford the
wildest and most picturesquely beautiful scenery on the continent.

The Arkansas River at the fording of the Old Trail is not more than
knee-deep at an ordinary stage of water, and its bottom is well paved
with rounded pebbles of the primitive rock.

The overland trade between the United States and the northern
provinces of Mexico seems to have had no very definite origin;
having been rather the result of an accident than of any organized
plan of commercial establishment.

According to the best authorities, a French creole, named La Lande,
an agent of a merchant of Kaskaskia, Illinois, was the first American
adventurer to enter into the uncertain channels of trade with the
people of the ultramontane region of the centre of the continent.
He began his adventurous journey across the vast wilderness,
with no companions but the savages of the debatable land, in 1804;
and following him the next year, James Pursley undertook the same
pilgrimage. Neither of these pioneers in the "commerce of the
prairies" returned to relate what incidents marked the passage of
their marvellous expeditions. Pursley was so infatuated with the
strange country he had travelled so far to reach, that he took up
his abode in the quaint old town of Santa Fe where his subsequent
life is lost sight of. La Lande, of a different mould, forgot to
render an account of his mission to the merchant who had sent him
there, and became a prosperous and wealthy man by means of money
to which he had no right.